DELINQUENCY IN GENERAL

1. I. NATURE OF DELINQUENCY
I. NATURE OF DELINQUENCY
ü Incidence of delinquency accelerates at age 13 and peaks at age 17.
ü The prevalence (how widespread youth crime in the society) of different kinds of offending at
each stage but also about the percentage of person initiating and terminating. Termination at
about 18 or 19.
ü The gap between male and female involvement in status and non-victimizing offenses of
serious types.
ü A larger proportion of boys than girls report having broken the law and that boys break it
frequently.
ü As of value of goods stolen increases, so does the sex ratio showing male involvements.
A. STAGES OF DELINQUENCY
a. Emergence. The child begins with petty larceny between 8 and sometime during the 12th year
b. Exploration. He then may move on to shoplifting and vandalism between ages 12 to 14.
c. Explosion. At age 13, substantial increase in variety and seriousness.
d. Conflagration. At around 15, four or more types of crime are added.
e. Outburst. Those who continue on adulthood will progress into more sophisticated or more
violent forms of criminal behavior.
B. PATHWAY TO DELINQUENCY
a. Authority-conflict Pathway. Begins at early age with stubborn behavior. This leads to
defiance and then to authority avoidance.
b. Covert Pathway. Begins with minor, underhanded behavior that leads to property damage.
This behavior eventually escalates to more serious form of criminality.
c. Overt Pathway. Escalates to aggressive acts beginning with aggression and leading to
physical fighting and then to violence.
C. CATEGORIES OF STATUS OFFENSES
ü Status Offenses- A number of activities are deemed offenses when committed by juveniles,
because of the their age at the time of the activity.
A. Truancy – a pattern of repeated or habitual unauthorized absences from school by any
juvenile subject to compulsory education laws.
B. Repeated disregarding or misuse of lawful parental authority
C. Repeated running away from home
D. Repeated use of intoxicating beverages
E. Delinquent acts committed by a juvenile younger than 9 years of age.
D. CLASSIFICATION OF DELINQUENCY
a. Unsocialized Aggression – Rejected or abandoned no parents to imitate and become
aggressive.
b. Socialize Delinquency – Membership of fraternities or groups that advocate bad
things.
c. Over-inhibited – Group secretly trained to do illegal activities, like marijuana
cultivation.
E. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY TENDENCIES
a. Malicious – Expression of defiance
b. Negativistic – Changeable attitudes like not being satisfied in status.
c. Non-utilitarian – Vandalistic attitude like graffiti.
d. Hedonistic – Doing bad thing for pleasure.
F. TYPES OF DELINQUENTS
1. Occasional Delinquents – these delinquents participate in a group. They have common or
similar characteristics. They are “pro-social” (They do what other are doing).
* Sub-Culture – A group of people who share a number of values and attitudes in common.
2. Gang Delinquents – Generally commits the most serious infractions, is most often sent to a
correctional institution, and most often continuous in a pattern of semi-professional criminal
behavior as an adult.
3. Maladjusted Delinquents – The activity stems from personality disturbance rather than gang
activity or slum residence. They are having “weak ego” “the asocial”, experienced early and
severe parental rejection. They have poor personal relations and suffer general social isolation.
They are disorderly, confused and not dependable with pathological disturbances.

2. II. CAUSATION OF DELINQUENCY

A. FAMILY AND DELINQUENCY
B. SCHOOL AND DELINQUENCY

2. II. CAUSATION OF DELINQUENCY

2.1. A. Family and Delinquency
1. Family Structure- the Family size and birth position both had been found to have predictive
effects on delinquency.
ü Family Size
 Parents of larger families tend to give less parental attention to their children.
 Children of large families are having a greater chance to become delinquent, and this is a
predictive factor. It was found that delinquency is associated with the number of brothers in the
family, but not with the number of sisters.
 Members of large families had been found to be lacking in educational success, they perform
poor in school and they score low in IQ test, and low intelligence.
ü Child’s Birth Order
 Birth order affects the delinquent behavior with delinquency more likely among middle children
than first or last children.
 The first child receives individual attention and affection of parents, while the last child benefits
from the parent’s experience of raising children, as well as from presence of siblings, who serve
as models. In some cases, the delinquent child is the first or last child.
2. Relations between Parents and Children
The strongest predictive factor for delinquency is having criminal parents. While a very small
part of this effect may be accounted for by genetic factors, most of it must be related to the
relationship of parents toward their children. It may be that parents provide a model of behavior
for the children to copy or a model of aggressive and antisocial behavior which in turn leads to
delinquency.
ü Family Rejection
1. Studies found a significant relationship between parental rejection and delinquent behavior.
2. Some children are being rejected by their parents as a result, they are deprived of one or both
of their parents through abandonment, hospitalization, divorce, death or intervention of public
agencies.
3. According to John Bowlby, A British Psychologist, even a short absence on the part of the
mother could have deleterious effects on the psychic well-being of the child. A child who is
deprived of his mother goes through three phases:
 Protest – cries and screams for mother, shows panic, clings when she visits and howl when she
leaves.
 Despair – after a few days, child becomes withdrawn, sucks thumb
 Detachment – loses inters in parents, and is not concerned whether they are there or not.
ü Discipline in the Home
1. Inadequate supervision and discipline in the home have been commonly cited to explain
delinquent behavior.
2. Where discipline is erratic or harsh, children tend to become delinquent in adolescence. Such
parents differ from normal parents in punishing harshly, and in giving many commands. Certain
children are difficult to discipline, shouting and incessant commands are a parental reaction to
the child’s constant misbehavior.
3. The fact that parents of normal children can make their children behave worse simply by giving
more commands is an indicator that discipline is a shaping factor.
ü THREE TYPES OF HOME THAT BREEDS THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOR
1. A loving, friendly and just home that breeds a Conforming Behavior.
2. A loving, liberal, and open-minded home that breeds Critical behavior
3. A loveless, lonely and problematic home life that breeds Deviant Behavior.
ü CULTURAL SCRIPTS FOR THE CONTEMPORARY FATHER
1. THE UNNECESSARY FATHER – Portrays fatherhood, as distinctive social role for men, as either
necessary or undesirable. It is argued that single mothers can raise children just as well as a
married couples can. Mothers without a man in the father are told that they can discover the
pleasure of being alone. Fathers are useful in some ways but their presence is appreciated but
not required.
2. THE OLD FATHER – The traditional patriarchal father, the masculine, aggressive, overbearing
father who wants to raise his daughters as girls and his sons as boys. The traditional masculine
values are viewed as having been used to justify wife and child abuse.
3. THE NEW FATHER – Portrays the father as nurturing individual, and a deeply involved
parent. He agrees that the problem of being a male must be overcome and that
masculine traits must also be removed from the male offspring.
4. THE DEADBEAT DAD – This is a bad guy. This is concerned not with the badness of the guy as
father, but with his failure to make required child-support payments. Money is the bottom-line;
the core issue is money absence, not father absence.
 5. THE SPERM FATHER – Portrays the father in a minimalist role, a one-act dad. There are no
expectations of him; he does not, and will not, know his child. He may have been a one-night
stand, have done a favor for a friend, or have sold some of his sperm on a sperm bank. He is a
man who wishes to procreate without having to engage in fatherhood.
6. THE VISITING FATHER – He is effectively invisible. He is part father, part stranger; he sends in his
child-support payments and exercises certain limited rights, but has little authority over his child
and less influence on the child’s values and habits.
7. THE GOOD FAMILY MAN – He is not perfect but enough to be irreplaceable. He is married, stays
around, and is a father to his children. He believes that it is his responsibility to provide for his
family’s well-being and to help his wife raise their children to have a good moral character.
ü QUALITY OF HOME
Poor family home life, measured my marital adjustment and harmony within the home, it also
affects the rare of delinquent behavior among children more than whether or not the family is
intact.
1. BROKEN HOME- This does not refer to the separation of parents leaving their children
behind, but includes the presence of parents who are irresponsible that children experience
constant quarrel in the home. Broken homes are associated with an increase risk in deviant
behavior.
EFFECTS OF FAMILY BREAKDOWN TO THE CHILDREN:
 Being brought up by one parent instead of two decrease the amount of surveillance which
protects against delinquency.
 Divorce plunges the family into poverty, which is associated with deviance and forces the family
to find accommodation in a high delinquency area.
 People who divorce are less stable character than normal, and pass their instability onto their
children.
2. SINGLE PARENT FAMILY- Majority of single parent families are the products of divorce,
part of the effect is simply that of the strained relationships between the parents prior to family
breakdown.
EFFECTS:
1. Single parent is much more likely to be living in poverty, or living in a high-delinquency area
than are married persons.
2. Single-parent may find it more difficult to control their children during late childhood and
adolescence.
3. The fathers of the children of single-mothers may have criminal behavior or alcoholism which
may have influenced their children prior to family-breakdown.

2. II. CAUSATION OF DELINQUENCY

2.2. SCHOOL AND DELINQUENCY
The general path towards occupational prestige is education, and when youth are deprived of this
avenue of success through poor school performance there is a greater likelihood of delinquent
behavior.
We have seen that some schools are more likely to produce delinquency than others as
characterized by:
  Larger intake of lower ability pupils, which allow anti-school culture to flourish.
 More fuss about rules and higher level of punishment
 Reluctance to allow pupils to take part in decision-making and discipline
 Low expectation as to educational and behavioral outcomes
 Lack of coordination of within the staff
1. POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
ü Poor academic performance has been directly linked to delinquent behavior. There is general
consensus that students who are chronic underachievers in school are also among the most likely
to be delinquent.
ü Failing to achieve success in school can result in frustration, anger, and reduced self-esteem,
which may contribute for delinquent behavior.
1. CORRELATES OF SCHOOL FAILURE
1. Delinquents may have lower IQ than non-delinquents, a factor that might also explain their
poor academic achievement.
2. Delinquent behavior has also been associated with a turbulent family life, a condition that
most likely leads to academic underachievement.
3. Delinquency has been associated with low self-control and impulsivity, trains that also may
produce school failure.
4. The adolescent who both fails at school and engages in delinquency may be experiencing drug
use, depression, malnutrition, abuse, and disease, all symptoms of a general troubled lifestyle.
2. CAUSES OF SCHOOL FAILURE
1. Social Class. Working class children are not as well equipped to function in middle class
schools because of their impoverished background. They lack the motivation, parental support,
and academic skills which they need to do well. Scholl failure is more detrimental to middle and
upper class children because of heightened expectation of these children.
2. Tracking. Tracking is dividing students into groups according to their ability and achieving
levels.

EFFECTS OF TRACKING
a. Self-fulfilling Prophecy. Low track students, from whom little achievement and more
misbehavior are expected, tend to live up to these often unspoken assumptions about their
behavior.
b. Stigma. The labeling effect of placement in a low track leads to loss of self-esteem, which
increases the potential for academic failure and troublemaking both in an out of school
c. Student Subculture. Students segregated in lower tracks develop a value system that often
rewards misbehavior, rather than the academic success they feel they can never achieve.
d. Teacher effectiveness. Teachers of high-ability students make more of an effort to teach in
interesting and challenging manner than those who instruct lower-level students.
e. Future rewards. Low track students see no future rewards for their schooling, their futures
are threatened by a record of deviance or low academic achievement.
f. Grading Policies. Low-track students tend to receive lower grades than other students, even
for work of equal quality.
3. STUDENT ALIENATION
ü Alienation is the feeling of separation and distance from mainstream society.
ü Schools that do not maintain a positive school climate are at risk for producing large numbers
of cynical, alienated students who report they neither like school nor care about their teacher’s
opinion.
3. ADOLESCENCE, PEER AND DELINQUENCY
ü Adolescence is the transgression stage between childhood and adulthood. The period of life as
turbulent, emotional one, filled with storm and stress, brought on by the various biological
changes of puberty.
THREE (3) VERSION OF PEER-DELINQUENCY RELATIONSHIP
(1). Antisocial Adolescents. Seeks like-minded peers for criminal association. If delinquency is
committed in groups, it is because “birds of the same feather flock together” and not because
deviant peers cause otherwise law-abiding youths to commit a crime.
(2). Social Kids. The delinquency experience marked by close peer group support. Kids who
maintain friendship with antisocial friends are more likely to become delinquent regardless of
their own personality makeup of the type of supervision they receive at home.
(3). Interactive Kids. Peers and delinquency are mutually supporting. As children move
through the life course, friends will influence their behavior and their behavior will influence
heir peers.
ü DELINQUENT PEERS
1. GANGS- This is frequently associated with groups in socially disorganized and deteriorated
inner city neighborhoods. It applied to youths who are engaged in a variety of delinquencies
ranging from truancy, street brawls, and beer running to race riots, robberies, and other serious
crimes.
FREDERIC TRASHER- In his 1927 study of more than 1300 delinquent gangs in Chicago,
noted that no two (2) gangs are exactly alike, delinquent gangs possess a number of qualities that
set them apart from other social groups.
YOUTH GANG- is a self-forming union of peers, bound together by mutual interests, with
identifiable leadership, well developed lines of authority and other organizational features.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GANG:
1. ORGANIZATION- This states that a gang/gang members has collective goals.
ORGANIZATIONAL STYLES:
a) The Vertical/hierarchical style. This kind of structure was used for constant expansion of
territory so as to increase business opportunity and this could be best done through the
maintenance of a clear authority structure.
b) The horizontal/commission type. In this kind of structure, there are specific positions not
organized into hierarchical order, responsibility being equally divided. Decision making takes
longer in this kind of gang.
c) The influential model. There are no formal positions, but between two and four members are
recognized by the others as forming legitimate leadership. Their authority is charismatic for they
have seen to have personal qualities that marked them out from the others.
d) Leadership – gangs have established leaders, like militaristic or mafia style model – the top
authority positions analogous to that of the highest ranking officer in a military unit, rule by
force by the leader who is usually older, stronger and reversed by gang members.
e) Turf – Particular territory or neighborhood crossing turf boundaries and entering another gang
territory.
f) Cohesiveness – share privacies with one another than their non-delinquents to believe they can
trust their friends and have their trust on their friends
g) Purpose – delinquent gangs have been typically though to exist for the purpose of committing
offense.
2. TRAITS OF GANG- The conditions of life lead to people growing up in slum areas of the
inner cities has a particular set of character trait known as Defiant Individualism.
a) Competitiveness – The child growing up in a slum area learns to compete for scarce resources
for survival.
b) Mistrust – The child learns that he cannot have confidence in others, who will always put
themselves first.
c) Self-reliance – The individual learns to count on no-one but himself, and that any assistance
has cost.
d) Social isolation – The individual learns not to become emotionally attached to others, for they
will only lead to pain.
e) Survival instinct – the characteristic is solidified by the young person’s experience of the
loser’s in the neighborhood, who give him added impetus not to be dragged down.
f) Defiant air – the individual makes it clear to authority figures that he will not knuckle under.
4. DRUGS and DELINQUENCY
a. The more an adolescent uses drugs, the more likely it is that he will come to the attention of
the juvenile justice system.
b. The more the adolescent uses drugs, including alcohol, the more likely it is that he become
physically and psychologically dependents on drugs.
c. The more that the adolescent is physically and psychologically dependent on drugs, the more
likely it is that he will commit delinquent acts to support the drug habit.
d. The more that the adolescent is physically and psychologically dependent on drugs, the more
likely it is that he will become involved in highly delinquent peer culture.
e. The more an adolescent commits delinquent acts and is involved in a highly delinquent
subculture, the more likely it is that he will be adjudicated delinquent and be placed under the
supervision of the juvenile court.